Grandad Reflects on Faith, God, Climate & Environment

 I chose not to publish this in paper form to avoid adding unsold books to the environment so you are free to download and copy Faith and the Concept of God and to use it with acknowledgement. It is not available otherwise and there is no cost involved. Grandad

  When the ancestors walked the earth they new this world as a living being. Their “mother” who gave them life. Indigenous peoples around the world understood this and learned to live in harmony with their environment. The elders heard the ancient voices and regulated the use of the land and the of other creatures who shared it with them. They could not conceive of a people who would rape the mother and take as much as they could from her. They spent more of their time in community than in gathering food and knew the meaning of wisdom. In time cities grew. Nations flourished. Rulers dominated. Crowded together, they needed more food and land to sustain them. They took it from their neighbours and enslaved the less fortunate to till the soil and care for the food animals for them. Huge machines grew from the intelligent species. Advancement brought freedom for some and greater poverty for others. Wars were needed to create more “free-holdings” and cement the power of those in ...

 I have enjoyed reading the short version of In Touch and it is about right for my old brain. In the last issue there was an interesting comment on Lent, and it contained two things which caught my eye and I thought I could add some additional comment. The first is the correct statement that the temple authorities were concerned for their livelihood but perhaps it goes further. By the time this was written the temple had already been destroyed by the Romans after another insurrection. The temple hierarchy were responsible to the Romans for collecting the taxes and obtained a cut from this but were also expected to keep the population subservient and peaceful. Jesus’s actions and statements threatened this peace and particularly at the time of the Passover remembering the time when the Israelite nation had been freed from the domination of the Egyptian pharaoh it could have stirred up unwelcome nationalism. The couple on the road to Emmaus commented. “we had hoped that he might be...